mattp

That's not a bad argument, Harry, but I think "common sense" can probably be cited to argue that someone who parks on the side of the road with six feet of snow plowed away so that they can park there realizes that this is considered "winter." To anybody but us nerdly climbers looking to measure our accomplishments against the next guy, the passage of five days since the equinox does not make it "summer" or even "spring" above, maybe, 2000 feet. This argument is probably more common sensical than the idea that winter didn't start until December 21, and ended March 20.

Corn? It looks like freshiez to me. Cool shot!

Yes, I remember getting stuck just shy of the top on one or two occasions -- also suffering some rope drag issues. Of course, I habitually break the "second" pitch of Midway into two, also, even though I think a 60m will reach the top from Jello Tower. When cragging I often favor breaking pitches for easing rope drag or facilitating communication with partners, etc. rather than trying to stretch them out to say "I climbed Outer Space as four pitches" or whatever.

I think what I've climbed at Tieton is mostly pretty accurate but seem to recall there were some moderates, maybe "5.7" or something, that are pretty damn stiff for their given grade. Anybody else run into these?

Just a hint for would be pubclubbers: if you want to encourage broader attendance, type the name of the place and the address in capital letters or something. Maybe in red. Nobody but a dedicated pub clubber is going to scroll the thread just to try to find the address. It might also help to type something inviting, as well. Like HEY FOLKS: WE'RE GETTING TOGETHER AND WE HAVE SOME COOL PICTURES TO PASS AROUND... or whatever. (Maybe I'll have some if I can find that CD.)

I don't think my 60 meter rope reaches the top of the rock from Saber Ledge on the Canary route. --- By the way, you guys typing all the abbreviations: I know it is all the rage but for us old guys whose memory is dim it is really a pain in the neck to have to think: What is PK now anyway? Is it that hard to spell out a route name?

It would definitely give you the feeling of being high up for a long time and it is one of the most prominent features on the mountain. I bet camping along the ridge would be pretty cool.

It is a long route and I think the principal reason people climb it is because it avoids glacier travel. I've known more than one climber select it for a solo climb for this reason. Later in the year, it has miles of scree. Even at this time of year, I'd opt for something else. The Kautz Cleaver, just to the right, looks like a miniature Liberty Ridge and I've had my eye on it for a long time. For a longer, scenic route, I'd look at Tahoma Glacier. Tahoma Cleaver, too, looks like a good route that is rarely climbed.

I have had plenty of friends report their cars broken into in Vancouver. Personally, I'd worry about parking in the City with a car full of expensive gear and I don't think that throwing a blanket over everything is going to ease my worry. Of course, I had all my gear stolen from my truck in downtown Seattle, too. That was in the Pioneer Square area, and maybe it would have been less likely to happen in other parts of town. Would it be as risky to leave your gear in your car while you go out for dinner in, say, Kitsilano as compared to East Vancouver? I would guess not but then again I don't know Vancouver.

Mike on Damnation. Photo courtesy of Baby Orca.

The lookout on Three Fingers turned into a popsickle.

Don't make me do it.

Here's a shot from a month ago. It has probably snowed something at least half the days since then and I don't think the freezing level has been above 5,000 or 6,000.

OK Jay, I agree. Learning is good and I commend anybody who actually pays attention and thinks about this stuff. But Will is right in a fundamental sense: people who worry about these complexities generally/most-often/when-they-are-in-front-of-me are a pain in the ass and are no safer than the guy who clips the damn nut and hangs a quickdraw on the pin.

Getting climbers together and getting the stoke up is cool. Don't mind Pax -- he might even show up at your next "stoke night" if he's in Porttown. Its just the way we show our love here at cc.com.

I thought you hated hippies. All those PCC shoppers, even if they have now shaved and cleaned up, used to be hippies.

Sign me up.

Yes, from Index you can take Reiter Road around part of the backup, but you are dumped out back on Highway 2 short of Gold Bar and then you are back on Highway 2 until Sultan, where you can take a detour on the south side of the river. These alternatives will save you time on a bad night, but they don't solve the problem. And the, of course, once you are through all of that you have to take 522 back to Woodinville.

When it is really bad, it backs up from Sultan all the way past Index. You might as well just pull off and shoot yourself when that happens. I don't know if it is true or not, but I've occasionally heard that some of the business people in those communities (Sultan, Startup, and Gold Bar) have been resisting the construction of a bypass. As noted, going back late helps. Draw a circle around Seattle, and figure out when you would expect to drive home and arrive between 6:00 pm and 9:00 pm on a Sunday night, and avoid these hours at all cost. This applies to highway 2, I-90, and I-5.

The hut is near the bottom of the Anniversary Glacier, next to some small tarns at 5500 feet. It is a very nice hut, but it is often crowded - and not just on weekends. It is first-come-first-served and you can usually sleep inside even if it is packed, but it is frustrating trying to cook or hang out inside at dinner time when everybody is fighting for counter space and running back and forth cooking and getting snow to melt at the same time. The preferred sleeping area is in the loft upstairs - on a wood floor; no mattresses are provided. There is no cooking stove or lantern. For payment, donations are requested. more information There are several creek drainages in the Duffy Lake area which offer excellent skiing at all levels of difficulty, both for day and overnight trips. There is another popular hut in Marriot Basin, accross the Duffy Lake road. The Pemberton area has at least a dozen huts that are open to the public, but most require a full day or more approach unless you take a helicopter.

Climb: Cerise Creek (Keith's) Hut Date of Climb: 3/18/2006 Trip Report: I had been talking with a couple of guys from cc.com about going to Cerise Creek for a sampling of what the Coast Mountains have to offer, and Fred sent me an email: WANNA GO TO CERISE CREEK? MIGHT BE AROUND THIS WEEKEND. CALL ME. So I called him, and of course he wasn’t home (he never is). But ‘round about Thursday he re-appeared, and one of my cc.com buddies, weekendclimber, was still "in" so we agreed to leave Friday night. Fred was wheezing, and complaining that the pills weren’t working fast enough. "A hundred twenty bucks!! What are you gonna do? Just take ‘em and maybe you’ll get better in a few days. My doctor told me to stay home in bed. I got bronchitis - hear it? Hwzzz..." So we drove up to Pemberton, and Fred graciously offered to sleep on the floor while weekendclimber and I took the beds in a hotel room. OK Fred. Nighty night -- almost. after a half hour of coughing and hacking up flem, Fred fell asleep and all was quiet. The next morning, we headed for breakfast, and it was pretty slow. Fred was ready to give up on the whole thing and head for the hills but we hung in there. We started skiing at the crack of noon (well maybe 11:00) and made quick(?) time toward the hut. Fred could go no more than a couple hundred yards between rests and gasps for air, wheezing all the while. He refused to let us take any of his load, and he kept telling us to go on ahead and allowed as he hoped he wasn’t going to have to sleep in the snow somewhere short of the hut. We, of course, stuck with our partner. It took a while, but I was absolutely amazed watching how Fred could negotiate every tree well and log and sidehill - whatever it was - with careful precision. Never once did he even begin a slip on the icy obstacle course of a trail. The hut was crowded, and we staked out the last couple of spots in the loft while at least fifteen poeple set up tents nearby. Just before the "evening rush," we cooked an early dinner, and weekendclimber and I headed out for a ski as dusk was falling. At this time, with a dozen parties trying to cook dinner, the hut had become unbearably crowded and it was a nice time of day to be out. We found some powder on the back side of a ridge that would dump us down over some bluffs into the woods for a thrash back to the main access trail, so we could only ski half of it before traversing back around to the crusty slopes above the hut. That evening, a few of us passed some single malt around and I got to re-connect with an old friend I’d never met before. Somebody asked me: “the old guy – is he your father?” I said, “no, he’s just a friend I met on the Internet.” The guy asked “He probably knows a thing or two about these mountains, eh?” "He's probably climbed more mountains around here than anybody alive," I said; "HE's Fred Beckey." The guy replied, a little unsure, "That name sounds familiar." The morning dawned bright and clear. Fred, complaining of back pain and difficulty breathing, said he wanted to ski up onto the glacier, so we ate a leisurely breakfast and headed out. I was struggling with some sticky skins and some iced up bindings, and he helped me on with my skis and then set out in the lead. Unfortunately, he made it no more than a couple hundred yards up the hill before doubling over on his ski poles, complaining that the pain pills weren’t working. He announced that he’ll "trundle" on back down to the car but said we should go on ahead and go skiing. Weekendclimber and I headed up the hill for a ski run, but I was a little nervous about leaving Fred to ski all the way out by himself. After all, he had a lung infection, he’d taken some kind of pain killer, and he’s 83 years old. With maybe 25 people having skied out since we skied in and it was already icy, the trail was sure to be a Jamaican bobsled run and all he’d have to do was misstep around a tree well and it’d be a broken hip for the guy. We went up to where I knew we could find an entertaining gully to ski, and called it turn around time. I figured it was still in the sun and wouldn’t be too crusty. It wasn’t. Back down the trail, we found Fred slumped over his pack, chewing on a candy bar. "How you doing, Fred?" "I'm OK. Yeah, yeah, I'm Ok... Want some?" We enjoyed a leisurely ski back to the car, and I continued to marvel at how Fred cautiously picked his way down the trail. While I was slipping and sliding every which way and more than once ended up wrapped around a tree on the side of the trail, Fred carefully side stepped where he needed to and avoided even the possibility of a slip. The guy’s eyesite is starting to fail and he has difficulty reading a map unless the light is perfect, but he could read every wrinkle in the trail and navigate the luge run with the precision of a watchmaker. We drove home, leaving a little too early so as to get mired in some of the Whistler skier traffic but never-the-less we arrived back in Seattle at a reasonable hour. Fred spoke of his upcoming climbing trips to the Canadian Rockies next week, the American southwest the week after, and (maybe) the Cascades the week after that before he goes on an expedition to China next month. At the border, the customs officer seemed a little interested in the fact that we were three people aged 30, 50 and 80. He asked where we were from, kept looking at Fred, and took some time to run our passport numbers through the computer before letting us proceed. Meanwhile, he wanted to know if any of us had ever been to Canada before. After the guy cleared us and I ran over one of his orange cones, Fred asked: "why do they have to ask so many dumb questions?" Gear Notes: Get your napkins and condiments at Burger King. Approach Notes: cell phone needed for the drive.

That is often the best time for crusing conditions in the TC's, but it varies. There's a good chance you'll see some route reports from that area over the next month, so stand by for updates.

Did I call anybody a gaper? The guy could be Marc Twight plus Drew Brayshaw and I'd still offer the same suggestion. Has anybody ever honestly suggested that the Pickets was a place to go looking for dry rock in April or even the beginning of May? You might find it but it'd be unusual and highly unlikely to coincide with somebody's pre-set schedule.

Be careful there, Sy. I have no idea what your skill or ambitions may be, but you said you are "not from around here" and, while you are talking about some of the more exciting parts of the North Cascades, for sure, I bet there are few more than a dozen or so people who have ever done much climbing in the Pickets or on Redoubt in April and certainly not in "a couple of days." These would make excellent destinations if conditions were perfect and your skills were up to it but the weather tends to be unstable around here at that time of year and just as soon as the snowpack sets up we seem prone to getting a new dump of snow that messes it up again -- unless you are looking for powder skiiing in the alpine areas and are good at crawling through the woods on skis -- then April can be a great time of year. For dry rock, you might find something in the Stuart Range and, for a more mountaineering type outing, consider Mount Baker or a south or west side route on Mount Rainier.